Monday, August 24, 2015

Never Look Down: A Cal Claxton Oregon Mystery - Warren C. Easley

Never Look Down: A Cal Claxton Oregon
Mystery

Warren C. Easley

Poisoned Pen, Sep 1 2015, $26.95

ISBN 9781464204661

Former Los Angeles prosecutor Cal
Claxton enjoys his pro bono work offering legal aid out of his Old Town office
to Portland, Oregon’s poorest. Someone
shoots and murders Claudia Borrego, the fiancée of Cal’s landlord, Hernando
“Nando” Mendoza in the early predawn hours.
High school student and spray paint tagger Kelly “K209” Spence witnesses
the homicide from her perch four stories above the crime scene. Noticing Kelly high above, the killer fires
at her, but she escapes.

Realizing a graffiti artist probably saw the homicide; the cops,
feeling for his grieving friend Nando Cal, and a bloody predator search for
K209. Trusting no one especially after
the person she turned to is mutilated; staying above the fray Kelly eludes the
police, the lawyer and the psychopath until desperate she turns to the least
likely to betray her: Cal.

The third
Cal Claxton Oregon mystery (see Dead Float) returns the hero to Portland’s street artist
world (see Matters of Doubt) in which another young tagger (to the delight of
the audience) affirms WC Fields’ mantra: "Never work
with animals or children" as they own the story. Fast-paced with
twin senses of pending doom and deadly confrontation, readers will adore spunky
Kelly as she deploys her mountain-climbing skills in an urban jungle to stay
alive.